What’s New In Photomatix Pro 5.0

Photomatix Pro 5.0 has recently been released from its beta testing and is open for public download/purchase. There are quite a few changes, mainly some wording and a new Contrast Optimizer setting, and a new way to deghost.

To see the entire list of changes posted by HDRSoft, scroll past the video file. While those are the main highlights of what is new in Photomatix Pro 5, there are some minor wording issues not listed. I will cover those in the tutorial. For example, the “Luminosity” adjustment is now the “Tone Compression” adjustment. Find out what this means for your presets!

New Tone Mapping method named Contrast Optimizer. It is good at producing realistic-looking results while still enhancing shadows and highlights. You can access it via the ‘Balanced’ preset (second on the list).

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New Fusion method called Fusion/Real-Estate. It is intended for rendering interior scenes with a view out of the window. It replaces the Fusion/Realistic method available in batch mode in version 4.2.

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Option to enable Exposure Fusion when a single RAW file is loaded.

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Automatic Deghosting offers additional options: You can adjust the Deghosting strength and select the base exposure used, with the help of a preview of the deghosted image.

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Updates in Batch of Bracketed Photos: You can now select a Preset directly from the main batch window, and can also process with multiple presets and custom settings.

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More options on Workflow Shortcuts panel. In particular, ability to return with one click to the last session to process the image again with different settings.

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Option to refresh Preview continuously as slider moves. You can enable it on the General section of the Preferences dialog (not available when the OS is Windows 32-bit).

Other updates in v5.0

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Significant improvements to alignment of hand-held images.

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Automatic highlight recovery is now used before tone mapping a single RAW file.

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When using Photomatix Pro via the Lightroom Plugin, photos part of a Collection are now re-imported into the Collection.

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Better support for multiple monitor configurations.

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Contextual help for Merge to HDR Options shows in a help frame.

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Bug fixed: Minimising and restoring Photomatix main window could result in displayed images not being shown correctly.

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Bug fixed: Open and Save As dialogs always appeared on the primary monitor, even if Photomatix was displaying on a different one.

f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it is less about the art and more about the process. He dives deep into difficult topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside the box thinking.

5 Comments

Nikon_Bob
on December 8, 2013 at 8:29 pm

Hi Blake,

I just upgraded to Photomatix 5 and just started to work with it. I hope you continue to make tutorials for us. I do have a question Oloneo software.They are having a special on it, and after watching your Youtube I was wondering how you feel about it with all the other new software like Photomatix and Topaz. It’s interesting, but I don’t need to be redundant.

I, of course, will continue to make tutorials for you! Oloneo is a great program, I own it too. I don’t use it nearly as much as Photomatix, but it comes down to personal preference. You can get some awesome results with Oloneo too. My brain just maps best with Photomatix. 9.9/10 times I use Photomatix, it is just easier to access and I know it a bit better. It is definitely worth the free trial period, check it out, you may like it!